Equality for Us, Not You. Amid all the celebrating over the election of a (half-)black man as President, only a relative few people realized that on Election Day 2008, bigotry won three big triumphs. Existing same-sex marriage was undone by the yahoos of California, and banned by other yahoos in Arizona and Florida. That would be bad enuf. Worse, blacks and Hispanics — no: niggers and spics; if they can be bigoted against us, we can retaliate in kind — joined in the bigotry, voting in large majorities to take away from gay and lesbian Californians, rights that they assert for themselves, and to keep people in Arizona and Florida from ever having equal rights. This is not, for gay men, "the land of the free and the home of the brave".
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So bigoted, at essence, is this country that you couldn't even hear that story until the second half hour of extended broadcasts of the network evening news on Wednesday, not even Tuesday nite. It did not even make it into the standard half-hour nitely newscast, because antihomosexual bigotry is of no importance to the straight people who control media, as they control government.
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Obama and Biden helped take away gay men's and lesbians' rights in California, and to keep them second-class citizens in Arizona and Florida, in forthrightly standing against same-sex "marriage". So how are we supposed to rejoice in their victory? They are a tad less bigoted than the Radical Right, but still bigoted. Their election is not a big advance for human rights. Where was their bravery, to stand against bigotry in this "land of the free and the home of the brave"? What do they care about our rights? They've got theirs. Our not having ours is not their problem.
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So much for brave words like "Freedom is indivisible", something we used to say in the Sixties. Who coined that expression? Here's a longer quote. You should be able to guess the speaker before you get to the end:

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

— Speech in Berlin (26 June 1963)

It would seem that Barack Obama is the poor man's JFK, not a "new, improved" version. He might nonetheless meet the same fate, as the alienated white people who voted 57% against him decide to "take back this country". They may have lost it by the ballot, but feel they can take it back by bullet. Should that happen, do not be surprised if gay men do not join in the wailing and moaning over the death of a man who wanted equality for black people but opposed it for gay people.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:13 PM